Indonesia: State and Society in Transition PDF
Preview Indonesia: State and Society in Transition
INDONESIA INDONESIA State and Society in Transition Jemma Purdey, Antje Missbach, and Dave McRae boulder london Published in the United States of America in 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB © 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-62637-851-3 hc ISBN 978-1-62637-852-0 pb British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii 1 Indonesia: An Underrated Country? 1 2 Preindependence Indonesia 9 3 The Slide into Authoritarianism 37 4 Political Reforms After 1998 61 5 The Structures of Democratic-Era Politics 83 6 Persistent Inequality: Health, Education, and Work 107 7 Civil Society and Human Rights 133 8 Media and Popular Culture 167 9 Indonesia in World Affairs 193 Glossary 223 References 229 Index 251 About the Book 261 v Acknowledgments WE AIM TO ADD TO THE RICH BODY OF SCHOLARSHIP ON INDONESIA by bringing together in one volume aspects of Indonesia’s history, pol- itics, international affairs, economics, and society to provide an overall picture of this complex nation. Having observed Indonesia closely for more than two decades, we have published research on the history, pol- itics, and peoples, and together we share a keen desire to communicate and educate more people around the world about it. By engaging both our own research expertise and intensive analysis of recent specialist literature, we offer a comprehensive and up-to-date view of state and society in Indonesia. We thank Lynne Rienner and her team for guiding us smoothly through the production process. Our gratitude is also due to Richard Chauvel, who read every chapter and greatly enriched the book by sharing his insights and critical feedback. Many thanks to Rachel Salmond for helping us get the manuscript into shape. vii 1 Indonesia: An Underrated Country? THIS BOOK IS A STUDY OF THE CONTEMPORARY POLITICS AND society of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, with approximately 270 million people. Only China, India, and the United States have larger populations; India and the United States are the only two democracies larger than Indonesia. Unique among countries of its size, Indonesia is an archipelagic state. Consisting of more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia straddles the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and some of the world’s busiest shipping and trading routes pass through its waters. Indonesia’s size and unique geography mark it as a country that merits attention beyond its borders, particularly as the balance of geopolitical and economic heft continues to shift from the West to Asia. Yet Indonesia is rarely included in lists of emerging powers and economies, of which the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping is probably the best known. Its absence is in contrast to the global role the country played at the peak of its inter- national influence in the 1950s and 1960s, when it initiated the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) as an alternative to the Western and Soviet blocs of the Cold War and positioned itself at the helm of an anti- imperialist bloc of new emerging forces. What accounts for Indonesia’s much more modest international profile in contemporary times? Is it simply that Indonesia is in fact “one of the most underrated and under-appreciated countries in the world,” as former senior Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani (2018) posits? Or has Indonesia’s influence genuinely waned, because of various characteristics of its domestic affairs? In this book, we seek to equip readers to respond to these questions by 1 2 Indonesia: State and Society in Transition presenting a comprehensive survey of contemporary Indonesian poli- tics, society, and culture, and its relations with the outside world. No academic observer would contest the view that democratic Indonesia is beset by various shortfalls spanning politics, economic development, and society. Twenty years after the end of authoritarian rule, Indonesia faces many challenges, ranging from enduring poverty, rising inequality, and endemic corruption to increasing illiberalism, ero- sion in the protection of basic rights, and failure to address past instances of state violence, all of which are addressed in detail in the following chapters. How we interpret these deficits depends in large part on the comparative lens we adopt, with possible points of compar- ison being the Indonesia of twenty years ago, its neighbors in Asia Pacific, other so-called third-wave democracies, and its fellow members of the G20 (Group of 20), perhaps its most prized international forum, which is made up of the twenty largest economies in the world. When measured against such points of comparison, it becomes clear that Indonesia’s performance in various spheres of governance is broadly typical of countries with similar political pasts and income levels, diminishing the case that it has been egregiously underrated. In political terms, present-day Indonesia is unrecognizable when compared with the period of authoritarian rule by President Suharto that ended in May 1998. All legislative representatives and executive heads of government in Indonesia, from the village level up to the presidency, are now directly elected in competitive elections. Indonesia’s party sys- tem has also transitioned from stage-managed competition between three regime-approved parties to one in which ten or more parties of dif- fering and often loosely defined ideologies jockey for voters’ approval, albeit with vote buying persisting as an important part of their candi- dates’ electoral strategies. Critical commentary on political candidates by the media and civil society is widespread. More fundamentally, Indonesia’s amended constitution establishes a separation of powers and a clear basis for democratic competition. The document also estab- lishes a new bill of rights, mostly modeled on the International Con- vention on Civil and Political Rights, although the implementation of these rights has been inconsistent. Following its postauthoritarian transition and two decades of dem- ocratic consolidation, Indonesia similarly stands out within its immedi- ate region. Among its Southeast Asian neighbors, no other country has consistently maintained democratic status since the year 2000. Among those countries that have been democratic for part of this time, the Philippines is considered by scholars to have temporarily regressed into
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